|
Preface
TO Europeans residing in Hongkong or China,
I need not offer any excuse for inviting them to take up this book. The
natural desire to learn to understand the present by a consideration of
the past, will plead with them better than I could do. But the general
reader, in England and elsewhere, I entreat for a reconsideration of the
popularly accepted view that but little importance, beyond that of a
curio, attaches to Hongkong, its community and position, or indeed to
European relations with China.
At first sight, indeed, the Colony of Hongkong appears like an odd
conglomeration of fluctuating molecules of nationalities, whose
successive Governors seem to be but extraneous factors adventitiously
regulating or disturbing the heavings of this incongruous mass. But in
reality the Hongkong community is solidarily one. Though an unbridged
chasm does yawn in its midst, waiting for a Marcus Curtius to close it
and meanwhile separating the outward social life of Europeans and
Chinese, the people of Hongkong fire inwardly bound together by a
steadily developing communion of interests and responsibilities: the
destiny of the one race is to rule and the fate of the other to be
ruled. The different periods of Hongkong’s history, though demarcated
each by the administration of a different Governor, are in reality the
successive stages of the growth of one ideal person (the Colony)
naturally expanding itself in a continuous line of so many generations,
as it were, of one and the same ideal family (the community). Looking
deeper still, there is seen underlying this mixed and fluctuating
population of Hongkong a self-perpetuating unity: the secret inchoative
union of Europe and Asia (as represented by China). This union is in
process of practical elaboration through the combined forces of
.commerce, civilisation and Christian education, and particularly
through the steady development of Great Britain’s political influence in
the East, an influence which dates back to the earliest days of the East
India Company in India and China. Indeed, the Anglo-Chinese community of
Hongkong specifically represents that coming union of Europe and Asia
which China stubbornly resists while Great Britain and Russia, France
and Japan unconsciously co-operate towards it- As representing that
union, the Hongkong community has its root in the earlier and smaller
community of British and other European merchants with their Chinese
hangers-on settled at the Canton Factories. But the earliest prototype
can be discerned in the previous settlements of the Portuguese and Dutch
and more particularly of the agents of the East-India Company who were
unconsciously working out in China, as well as in India, the
international problem with the solution of which Hongkong is specially
concerned. When, under the impulse of the awakening free trade spirit in
England, the East-India Company had to withdraw from the field (1834),
the British free-traders at Canton continued to represent Europe in
China, and, when driven out thence, transplanted to Hongkong (1841)
those unifying commercial and political principles which; are to the
present day the underlying elements progress in the historic evolution
of Hongkong.
But as the history of the Hongkong community presents thus an unbroken
chain of influences connecting the political mission of Europe with the
present politics of Asia, so also the successive administrations of the
government of this Colony have the same inner unity. Though each
Governor is but a transient visitor, each possessed of his own
idiosyncracies, and each controlled by an ever shifting series of
Secretaries of State for the Colonies, behind them all is that ideal but
none the less real entity, the genius of British public opinion, which
inspires and overrules them all. That genius, feeling its mission in
Europe and North America fulfilled, has of late commenced to enter upon
a new field of action whereby to complete its destiny. Asia and
generally the countries and continents bordering on the Pacific Ocean,
now task the energies of Downing Street and of the Governors sent forth
from it, as well as the energies of the India Office, with problems of
such increasingly international bearings, that both the Colonial Office
and the India Office are rapidly outstripping in importance the Foreign
Office, and the necessities of both now demand the creation of a
Ministry specially charged with the direction of British affairs in the
Far East, The fact is. the fulcrum of the World's balance of power has
shifted from the West to the East, from the Mediterranean to the
Pacific.
To the popular view the position of Hongkong in the East appears to be
that of a remote Island, a mere dot in a little-known ocean. In reality,
however, Hongkong, which commercially ranks as the second port of the
British Empire, occupies a geographically most fortunate place in
relation to the peculiar destinies of the Far East. For the /last two
thousand years, the march of civilization has been directed from the
East to the West: Europe has been tutored by Asia. Ennobled by
Christianity, civilization now returns to the East: Europe’s destiny is
to govern Asia. Marching at the head of civilization, Great Britain has
commenced her individual mission in Asia by the occupation of India and
Burma, the Straits Settlements and Hongkong. By fifty years’ handling of
HongkongV Chinese population, Great Britain has shewn how readily the
Chinese people (apart from Mandarindom] fall in with a firm European
regime, and the rapid conversion of a barren rock into one of the
wonders and commercial emporiums of the warldj has demonstrated what
Chinese labour, industry and commerce can achieve under British rule.
'Moreover, located on the western border of the Pacific, in line with
Canada in the North-East, with Her Majesty’s Indian and African
Possessions in the South-West, and with the Australian Colonies in the
South, Hongkong occupies a specially important position, not only with
regard to the problems gathering round China and Japan (in their mutual
relations to Great Britain, Russia and Franee), but especially also with
regard to the greater .role which the Pacific Ocean is destined to play
in the closing scenes of the world’s history. What the Mediterranean and
Atlantic were while civilization moved from East to West, the Pacific is
bound to become now since the tide of progress runs from West to East.
Africa is even now being brought into the sphere of.modern civilization
by the combined powers of Europe. The turn of South-America will come
next. There is not a first-class power in the world that has not
possessions on the shores of the Pacific. Great Britain and the United
States, Russia and Franee, Germany and Italy, Spain and Portugal, all
vie with each other in the control of countries bordering on, or islands
situated in, the Pacific basin. It requires no prophet’s gift to see
that the politics of the near future centre in the East and that the
problems of the Far East will be solved on the Pacific main. Contests
will be sure to arise and in these contests Hongkong will be one of the
stations most important for the general strength of the British Empife.
Here, evefr more than in its bearing upon the Asiatic problem, lies the
real importance of HongKbng Success the position of this Colony in
relation to the destinies of the young Hongkong will yet have a
prominent place in the future history of the' British Empire.
The foregoing consideratons will commend the subject of this book to the
attention of the general reader. As to its treatment, the endeavour of
the writer has been to combine with the aims of the historian, writing
from the point of view of universal history, the duties of the
chronicler of events such as are of special interest to European
residents in the East,. so as to provide at the same“time~a handbook of
reference for those who take an active interest in the current affairs
of this British Colony as well as in British relations with China. This
volume brings down the story of Hongkong’s rise and progress to the year
1882. The more recent epochs of its history are too near to our view yet
to admit of impartial historic treatment for the present.
E. J. EITEL.
College Gardens,
Hongkong, August 2, 1895.
Editors Note: As you work your
way through this book you will see the prominent place Scots played in
the formation of Hongkong and its development.
You
can download this book here |
